[INFOGRAPHIC] Online Overload – It’s Worse Than You Thought

It’s official. We are all stashing more information online than ever before. In fact, the average user has at least 90 online accounts – that’s a heavy load!

With each new account comes another password to remember. So comes the question, how do you effectively manage these accounts while keeping them safe at the same time?

We decided to delve into a sample of anonymous data from over 20,000 users of our email-auditing tool, Dashlane Inbox Scan, to show the full extent of the failing human memory when it comes to forgotten passwords and online accounts.

The results are ready. If you’re surprised or find them interesting, please share them or embed our infographic on your own blog.

We are online hoarders

We’re creating and virtually stashing more online account information than ever. The average Inbox Scan user has over 107 accounts registered to one email address – an insanely high number of accounts to manage. In the US and UK, this figure rose to 130 and 118 respectively.

Here’s the kicker… The way the trend is headed, the number of accounts we use is growing at a 14% rate, meaning it doubles every 5 years. In 2020, the average number of accounts per Internet user will be 207! Are you ready to remember 207 login and password combos?

The overwhelming password problem

Managing 207 online accounts is not something our brains are wired to do, which is why we’re constantly forgetting our login details and asking companies to send us our passwords.

The average user had to reset a forgotten password for at least 37 accounts.

All this forgetting and resetting of passwords adds up to hours of time wasted and a great deal of frustration, especially if you’re above the average and had to deal with forgetting hundreds of passwords.

How will we manage accounts in the future?

Projections show that our hoarding problem is only set to grow.

For the next generation, forgotten passwords won’t just be a painful process; it’ll be a routine part of their lives. Apply the current data to the next three decades, and we’re headed for a “forgotten password” point of no return.

Compromising on security is not the answer

With so many accounts to access on a daily basis, it’s easy to do what seems faster at the time, even if it compromises your security and data protection. Using the same password on multiple accounts is a risky business – one data breach could put all your online accounts at risk (if you can even remember where you have accounts). What’s more, with hacking technology becoming more mainstream, reusing passwords will only get more and more dangerous.

Clean out those clear text passwords

What’s also worrying is the alarmingly high number of companies who don’t have consumers’ backs. Over 10% of companies emailed forgotten passwords to their customers in CLEAR TEXT – an incredibly unsafe practice that leaves passwords sitting in your inbox waiting for hackers to uncover them. Not good.

These rising projections only exacerbate the growing problem of account hoarding. Discarded accounts are a ticking online time bomb. For every account that falls by the wayside and is forgotten or discarded – whether it’s online shopping, or social – a door opens for hackers to slip in undetected, grab your private data and wreak havoc.

Do you know how many accounts you have, or how many of your passwords are hiding in your inbox? Take a guess, and run Inbox Scan to find out! (And then clean it up, of course.)